Alabama & America

"Alabama," firmly declared Governor Bibb Graves last week, "is going to observe the supreme law of America!"

This announcement came after the U. S. Supreme Court had once more taken official cognizance of the fact that in the South the Negro does not get all the rights of citizenship the 14th Amendment of the Constitution was intended to give him. In reviewing the death sentence passed on Negro Clarence Norris, one of Alabama's nine "Scottsboro boys," the Supreme Court for the second time reversed the State court's conviction on the ground that Negroes had been "systematically excluded" from the jury roll. Alabamans and the Press of the entire South took that decision with a stunned and apprehensive silence. It was at that critical point that Bibb Graves spoke up. Enclosing a copy of the Supreme Court's reversal, he wrote to every judge in the State:

"Holdings of the U. S. Supreme Court are the supreme laws of the land. Whether we like the decisions or not, it is the patriotic duty of every citizen and the sworn duty of every public officer to accept and uphold them in letter and in spirit. . . . This decision means that we must put the names of Negroes in jury boxes in every county."

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